Over the past two years, the company Alpine SG (ASG) has acquired two legal technology companies, the practice-management platform PracticePanther in 2018 (which I covered here) and the time, billing and practice-management platform Bill4Time in 2017. Now, ASG is merging the two companies to create a unified legal technology business, ASG LegalTech.

Soumya Nettimi, who was named CEO of PracticePanther last October, will now become CEO of ASG LegalTech. Kristin O’Neill, who has been director of customer success at Bill4Time for 10 years, will move into that role for ASG LegalTech.

The two products will remain independent brands, Nettimi told me yesterday, while their teams will be brought together in ways that will allow them to share their respective resources, experience and best practices in order to strengthen the collective whole. The new company will continue to support both PracticePanther’s Miami office and Bill4Time’s Bellevue, Wash., office, with Nettimi dividing her time between the two.

“We’re really excited that we have two really strong products and two teams with really different experiences and successes to bring to the table,” Nettimi said.

In addition to supporting the two existing products, the new company will explore development and acquisition of other products to serve the legal market. Nettimi declined to identify specific products, but said that they are studying the market to determine where the unmet needs are the greatest.

“We are looking at the categories where we can help lawyers spend less time managing and get back to practicing law,” she said.

The company has no plans to merge the two products into one, Nettimi told me. Both are strong products with different capabilities and different customer bases, she said.

“From a customer perspective, we have two outstanding products and will keep investing in both of them,” she said.

PracticePanther, founded in 2012, provides an all-in-one CRM and practice management platform for law firms. Bill4Time, founded in 2006, started with a focus on time and billing, but has expanded into analytics and practice management. While PracticePanther markets primarily to law firms, Bill4Time also markets to professional services firms in other verticals, including accountants, architects and consultants.

Both products have customers ranging from solo to medium-sized firms and even a few larger firms, Nettimi said.

The parent company ASG specializes in buying, building and operating software-as-a-service companies across a variety of verticals. ASG is backed by the private equity firm Alpine Investors.

Last week, ASG announced a similar move in a different vertical, when it acquired six marketing technology businesses and merged them into a single company, ASG MarTech. Steve Reardon, who was formerly CEO of Bill4Time and also for one of the marketing technology businesses, Grade.us, was named to lead ASG MarTech.

Reardon will remain involved in ASG LegalTech as an active board lead, the company said.

Photo of Bob Ambrogi Bob Ambrogi

Bob is a lawyer, veteran legal journalist, and award-winning blogger and podcaster. In 2011, he was named to the inaugural Fastcase 50, honoring “the law’s smartest, most courageous innovators, techies, visionaries and leaders.” Earlier in his career, he was editor-in-chief of several legal publications, including The National Law Journal, and editorial director of ALM’s Litigation Services Division.